A Merry Christmas (or whatnot) to everybody out there. My brother woke up a bit later than usual, around 8am (it's usually around 6am or earlier, heh). His big present this year was an XBox 360 of all things. My dad had originally planned to get him a Wii, but I convinced him otherwise (there's already a Wii in the house, no need for another). I thought he would get a DS Lite for him, but one day he came home with 2 XBox 360s and asked me which one he should keep (the other to take back). One with HDMI, of course, hoping that the new model won't break too soon (^^;; Since I've got the only HDTV in the house I'm letting him play in here for a bit. My mom tried to get me to get him one of those licensed movie games, but since he loves RPGs (all he plays on GBA... including the games I've imported) I got Eternal Sonata. Should keep him busy for a while, I think. And Polka kawaii yo Polka :) Anyways, that's it for now. Maybe, if I stop being so lazy I'll write up some thoughts on the shows that have ended (skipping DC2 since it's not even worth talking about).
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Hey, y'all, I know it's been a while since I posted last. Hard to stop being lazy (^^;; Anyways, I finally got around to getting an HDTV as an early Christmas present to replace my aging TV (with the bottom ticker of the Weather Channel burned into it). After trying out a Westinghouse SK-26H240S 26" and returning it because of some issues (buzzing when changing LCD backlight or some picture settings, av sync problems on inputs) I settled on an Olevia 226T 26" and am very much satisfied with it so far. The only thing I don't like about it is the very annoying blue LED showing that the main power switch is on when the LCD is off. Why does everybody have to use blue LEDs?
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Script: Michiru ShimadaEpisode Director/Storyboard: Kenji YasudaLayout/Animation Director: Shingo SuzukiCharacter Animation Director: Yumi Masuda       Opening: "Kokoro no Tamago" by Buono! - The new Hello Project (and the fanboys go wild) unit's first songs... not really that great, but I wasn't expecting anything great. Animation is excellent — Satelight got quite a group of animators this time around. Amu-chan kawaii yo Amu-chan!      Ending: "Honto no Jibun" by Buono! - Better than the OP, lyrics fit the theme of Shugo Chara very well.           
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Hey everybody, been a while, hasn't it? (^^;;) Thanks to watching most (make that pretty much all) things on Nico Nico Douga these days it's been easy to skip watching things a second time and blogging (even though I'd watch things like Potemayo 2 or 3 times every week), but hopefully I can get myself back into the blogging routine this season.. maybe. So, in order of broadcast, the fall shows I'll be watching (screencaps from this movie with information on all the fall shows). ☆ for shows where I've read the manga/novel/played the game that it's based on: October 1 (Monday) Da Capo II (feel.) I don't know much about it since I haven't played or read much about the game, but I'm hoping that it doesn't turn into Da Capo Second Season... Sketchbook (HAL Film Maker) Not to be confused with Hidamari Sketch, but it looks to be the same kind of relaxing show. October 2 (Tuesday) Mokke (Madhouse) Looks like a moe anime, actually a youkai show.. is what it seems to be... of course, I'm interested because of character design alone.. if Madhouse can keep the quality up (^^;;) October 4 (Thursday) Clannad (Kyoto Animation) Duh, of course I'm watching this. The OP/ED on the preview DVD were really nice, as expected, but I didn't understand a lot of it since I haven't played the game... And thank you very much TBS for giving us 4:3 pan and scan... guess I'll have to watch it again once it starts on BS-i on the 25th. Shakugan no Shana II (J.C. Staff) Uruchaiuruchaiuruchai!. I heard plenty of Shana-tan's voice from Nene@Potemayo, now it's time for the real thing. Though I've read Zero no Tsukaima, I still haven't gotten the Shana novels ＿|￣|○ Hoping that it turns out better than the second season of Zero no Tsukaima. October 6 (Saturday) ☆ Shugo Chara! (Satelight) One of the few shows this season where I've read the manga. Amu-chan kawaii yo Amu-chan! (of course, it's always that). Her seiyuu sounds decent for someone I've never heard of. I'm worried about the animation quality after seeing how Kami-chama Karin turned out, though... Satelight, ganbare! ef - a tale of memories (SHAFT) Something just a bit different than Zetsbou-sensei for SHAFT this time. The preview looked very, very nice -- can tell they're trying very hard to match Makoto Shinkai's backgrounds from the OP movie for the game. However, as it always is with SHAFT, who knows if they've got their schedule under control. No waiting 'til the last minute to get things done, please (^^;;) October 7 (Sunday) Rental Magica (ZEXCS) Heard that the novels are pretty good... and that's about it. ☆ Minami-ke (Daume) Kyou no Go no Ni manga-ka Koharu Sakuraba's manga about three sisters with quite different personalities, which leads to all sorts of comic hijinks. Let's not repeat the "cabbage" incident, Daume (^^;;) I like Asreed's character designs better, so I'm looking forward to their one more. October 10 (Wednesday) ☆ Kodomo no Jikan (Studio Barcelona) And here's my most anticipated show this season. The OVA was excellent, so I'm expecting the anime to keep the same high level of quality, just like Studio Barcelona did with Nanatsuiro Drops. The script is pretty much finished and faithful to the manga -- the question is whether or not it can be broadcast (^^;;)
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Hey, everybody! I (along with friend) have arrived in Baltimore, Maryland for Otakon. Flight was quite uneventful -- no point in having a window seat when it's cloudy the whole way ＿|￣|○ Anyways, I'll be making my way to the convention center shortly to have fun waiting in line to get my badge. Whenever I can find internet access again I'll post an update (and maybe photos... if my friend has a digital camera). July 21, 12:22am: Well, I'm exhausted after all that walking and going up and down stairs (most of the escalators at the convention center were blocked, and couldn't use elevators), but that's only 'cause I've been lazy :P Anyways, had a good time today meeting up with the people from Japanator and Destructoid -- pretty cool folks. I attended the Mamiko Noto Q&A session (actually got to ask a question) and will be posting a report on it on Japanator (and here) sometime... not tonight since I'm tired as I said. Got her autograph, too. Yay, even though I forgot to bring Ichigo Mashimaro or something for her to sign :) After that and attending the ADV panel (not much to report there) I went to the dealers' room.. and promptly spent a good bit on manga at Kinokuniya's booth. Bought Lucky Star 1-4, Shugo Chara 1, POP's Akazukin picture book, and the first Moetan book... somehow, I think I'll probably end up getting more stuff tomorrow (^^;;) Tomorrow I'll probably attend more industry panels (Media Blasters, Bandai, Geneon, I think), then I'll be going to see a screening of Makoto Shinkai's 5cm (35mm... should be veeeery pretty).. and after that, who knows. Anyways, going to watch Potemayo then get some sleep. Good night, y'all :) 1:13am: What!? Funimation licensed Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club and I was stupid enough to not go to their panel (right after the ADV one)... that's a big surprise there. I wonder how many others who were there had watched or even heard of the show. But what's this about only licensing the first season now? The story is only halfway done at the end of the "first season", so it would be rather mean to leave people hanging. I'll see if I can find a Funimation person today and get a better explanation.
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Futago Hime is apparently being shown on Chinese TV during primetime as 神奇星球luan生公主 (luan is a Chinese character not in Japanese) and is causing quite a stir on the Chinese side of the interweb among Chinese otaku, according to 「日中文化交流」と書いてオタ活動と読む. Only Chinese-made shows are allowed to be shown during primetime, so how does Futago Hime get around that? Easy -- by saying that it was made in China.   Left: China, Right: Japan As you can see, the credits for genga (along with everything else) have been changed from Japanese names to Chinese names. Apparently the show is being pretty much broadcast as-is with a Chinese OP/ED. The Chinese "production" company behind this is 大連東方龍動画発展有限公司, of which TYO, the parent company of HAL Film Maker, owns a 31% stake in. That could make it "Made in China" in a rather stretched definition, but claiming others' work as your own is certainly out of bounds. Why lie when it's obvious it's made in Japan, and why go so far as to change the credits?
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Well, that was rather quick -- order from Amazon.co.jp arrived here a day after it was shipped from Japan :) Here's all the stuff I got this time (thank you, tax refunds): Manga Hidamari Sketch 1-2 Doujin Work 1 Maruhon no Juunin 1 Mayuka no Darling 2 Yuriseijin Naoko-san 1 Usagi Drop 1-2 Twin Spica 11 Kodomo no Jikan 1-3 Mahoujin Guruguru 1-2 (thanks to seeing the anime on Nico Nico Douga) Kamichama Karin Chu! 1-2 Novels Zero no Tsukaima 4-6 (reading for the upcoming 2nd season of the anime) Suzumiya Haruhi no Bousou Suzumiya Haruhi no Douyou Suzumiya Haruhi no Inbou ....I got a bit too much as usual (^^;;) If there's anything you'd want me to write a bit about above post in the comments ;)
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      It's time for the school festival, and Yuno-chan has spent all night at school trying to finish up her picture, but she doesn't get it finished in time. Even with the blank space at the bottom (interpret that however you want), it's pretty well done. And after that, it's time to go to the public bath and have some fun. Miya-chan, don't run around naked... (^^;;) Well, what to say.... a clearly unfinished episode. Reminds me of that episode of Tsukyomi MOON PHASE that was like a radio drama. I guess Shaft's schedule is pretty rough now, finishing up Negima!? and doing Hidamari Sketch at the same time. One of the staff posted on his/her mixi page that the genga (keyframes) didn't get done until Wednesday, the douga (inbetween frames) didn't get done until 6pm that evening, and the episode ended up getting turned in unfinished. Without pictures to go along with the dialogue and SE, it was a bit tough to know what exactly was going on. The animation that was there was pretty good quality, though... hopefully they'll have the finished version of this episode ready to show on BS-i in a couple weeks. Ganbare, Shaft! Y'all have done a great job up until now, finish it off good, please ;)
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(cross-posted from Japanator) What do you get when you combine a video sharing site with the 実況 jikkyou boards (where people post while watching TV shows and such) on 2ch? Nico Nico Douga, a mashup that was started earlier this year, is what you get. Instead of just plain comments, Nico Nico Douga lets users leave comments in real-time which scroll across the movie while it's playing, and -- this is the important part -- also scrolls messages from other users at the point in the movie when they left them, making it almost like you're watching the video together with everybody else that's posted a comment. That feeling made Nico Nico Douga very popular very quickly, and soon all of the bandwidth used apparently earned the ire of YouTube, which cut off Nico Nico Douga's access to movies on their servers last month, marking the end of the public beta test of Nico Nico Douga. However, the development team worked quickly on a new version of the site, and in just one week they established their own video sharing service (with much better video and audio quality than Youtube), SmileVideo, and brought the site in back a limited gamma test open to 100,000 users (about 20% of the average number of users per day during the beta test, according to the developers' blog) on Monday. I quickly got hooked on Nico Nico Douga during the beta test, so of course I signed up as quickly as I could for the gamma test and ended up being number 62227, luckily. Now that Nico Nico Douga is back up, I'll give you a quick rundown of some of the more popular videos on the site after the jump.
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Hey everybody, y'all been missing me all that much? Sorry for taking such a long time off, but I guess I needed a break from blogging after doing it for 3 years straight now (anniversary was in February). It ain't as easy as it seems. I dunno what I'm going to do about catching up posting on current shows, but I'll try to post things from the past week or so (I really am this time, really). I'm planning on trying to shorten my posts a bit by going lighter on the summaries (If I can make myself do that) to reduce the load a bit. As y'all have noticed, I've changed the site theme to Hidamari Sketch for now. Quite a fun show. "Yunocchi kawaii yo Yunocchi!", would sum up my impressions so far. I thought about doing Saint October, but I'll probably use it next month since it's running 26 episodes (I think). Also, I've started up a news blog where I'll post news and other assorted things throughout the day (only the news posts will show up on the feed in the Antenna), so check that out and feel free to comment. And... I've started writing over at Japanator, so y'all check it out. My first entry is here. I'll cross-post entries I do over there here, either in the news blog or the main blog depending on content. Added: btw, if you didn't see it up in the news at the top there, I've been coding something the past few days, so y'all check it out and tell me what you think about it. Type in a message whenever you feel like it when you're watching the following (the box above is for making the text big, small, red, etc.). Only works in IE for now (^^;;) Okkusenman (song set to Dr. Wily Stage 1 from Mega Man 2) Idolm@aster - Ami "Agent yoru wo yuku" (tokachitsukuchite!) (Ami has trouble pronouncing "shi" -- ends up sounding like "chi")
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      Watch on DivX Stage6 OP: "Wheel of Fortune" by Gothloli Detectives (Azuka Kataoka, Yukari Fukui, Yuu Kobayashi) - Song itself is okay, vocals not exactly the best, but good enough for me... but first of all, what's with the flying CG lyrics and lyrics in the background and so on? There's been plenty of shows that have done that with the staff credits, but but this is something new. Pretty interesting, though I'm not sure if it fits this show that well ;)    ED: "Michi naru basho e" by Yukari Fukui - A slower song for the ending, of course.         Just screencaps for now since I've got to leave in a bit. Feel free to comment ;) 準備中
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